Boston Globe's Scores

Select another publication »
For 7,947 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1 point lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Autumn Tale
Lowest review score: 0 Argylle
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,229 out of 7947
  2. Mixed: 1,553 out of 7947
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 7947
7947 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. The Road to El Dorado
    Less than memorable.
  2. Onegin
    A confident and promising directorial debut, one that has the feel of an experienced director to it, from the hypnotic unfolding of scenes to the finely observed character details.
  3. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    To love Wilco is to believe in a certain rustic intelligence about popular music (and about yourself) and to embrace the Tweedy worldview that you need sarcasm and vagueness to cope with the pitfalls of sincerity.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Bank
    Handsomely shot and edited, The Bank benefits greatly from the brutal ministrations of LaPaglia,
  5. Bicentennial Man
    Few actors apart from Williams could bring it off.
  6. Beautiful People
    It's a spirited and essentially optimistic film, but it's also simplistic.
    • Boston Globe
  7. Romeo Must Die
    The reason to sit through its uninspired, formulaic moves, however, is its half-dozen spectacular fight sequences.
  8. The Real Cancun
    Not so much a documentary as it is a bald-faced party movie.
  9. The Business of Fancydancing
    Shot in digital video, Fancydancing feels a bit like a racy after-school special. Performances are amateurishly uneven.
  10. Showtime
    Would seem to be surefire casting. The catch is that they're stuck with a script that prevents them from firing on all cylinders.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Chuen jik sat sau
    Filmed with panache, wit, chic amorality, and an inexhaustible supply of Micro Uzi ammunition, ''Killer'' nevertheless represents a baroque dead end for the Hong Kong action genre.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Interview with the Assassin
    Like ''Blair,'' it never quite finds a way out of its own built-in dead-end.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Himalaya
    Valli's touch as an artist is too light, and his dramatic sense too timid, to make the film much more than a collection of pretty pictures.
    • Boston Globe
  14. Tattoo
    Maybe Tattoo is creepy and stylized enough to pull you along anyway, but if you like your thrillers to dig below the familiar epidermis, look elsewhere.
  15. Trixie
    There are so many wonderful moments in Trixie and so few films like it that you wish Rudolph had given it a few more rewrites.
  16. The Low Down
    Captures the ensemble quality it was after and the provisional look and feel are perfect stylistic analogues to the lives - the male lives, anyway - that it's portraying.
  17. One Night at McCool's
    Neither as rollicking nor as wild as one had hoped, but Tyler's tongue-in-cheek noir goddess transcends cliche and the screenplay's other shortcomings terrifically.
    • Boston Globe
  18. The Yards
    By the end, we're left with a feeling of depletion rather than resolution, which may have been Gray's intention.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Happenstance
    It has every mark of inspiration by imitation.
    • Boston Globe
  20. Birthday Girl
    This bizarre, uneven comedy is notable mostly for the unsettling presence of Nicole Kidman in full, kinky, sex-kitten mode.
  21. Mystery, Alaska
    Individual performances...are flavorful and simpatico.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Girls Can't Swim
    While not all transitions to adulthood are so fraught, there's much truth and no small amount of poetry in Girls Can't Swim.
  23. Bounce
    Something is missing in Bounce, the muted dynamic of which calls forth a perhaps inevitably muted reaction.
    • Boston Globe
  24. Gun Shy
    The bathroom jokes in Gun Shy wear thin.
    • Boston Globe
  25. An Affair of Love
    A bit of a cop-out, wrapping in wistful sentimentality a failure to acknowledge a connection that is more than epidermal.
    • Boston Globe
  26. Boiler Room
    Derivative and flawed. But it does throw off a few sparks.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    La bûche
    The film's invented Paris -- endless restaurants, boutiques, and impossibly large apartments, with a little artificial ''grit'' thrown in -- is pretty, and the neatly wrapped plot provides the comforting illusion that one's own family dramas can be as easily and amusingly resolved.
    • Boston Globe
  28. Naqoyqatsi
    A movie that seems to have been made mostly on the hard drive of a Power Mac G4. But whatever, we get it: Technology destroys everything.
  29. Random Hearts
    A-list soap opera, high-class and high-gloss.
  30. The Lady and the Duke
    Rohmer's style saps the film of the drama that flows directly from the subject matter.
  31. The Backyard
    The most disturbing thing about this grass-roots-inspired extreme-wrestling documentary by Paul Hough is how much worse you expect the violence to be.
  32. Laurel Canyon
    Frances McDormand rescues this role from the throes of cliche. It's as though drippy dialogue and sappy rock were a small price to pay for a part that lets her flash her breasts, get stoned, and join in a three-way.
  33. Est - Ouest
    Isn't always easy to sit through, but it repays patience. It's an honorable film, and it earns its undertow of poignancy derived from.
    • Boston Globe
  34. Stardom
    Denys Arcand has satiric fun with the media's way of taking celebrity culture at face value and nothing but. Eventually, though, the film becomes what it's ridiculing.
    • Boston Globe
  35. Stuart Little
    The new Stuart Little is OK, but it's never so charming that you forget you're watching a manufactured object.
  36. Holy Smoke
    In the end, Holy Smoke crashes and burns.
    • Boston Globe
  37. The Cell
    Many of the film's images will prove more than some viewers can take.
    • Boston Globe
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Assassination Tango
    Since its maker is one of the least vain of Hollywood actors, it's one that is worthy of indulgence and respect.
  39. The Princess and the Warrior
    Nowhere near as dynamic as the title implies. It's hard not to think of it as ''Sleepwalk Lola Sleepwalk.''
    • Boston Globe
  40. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
    For all its handsomeness, the movie reveals a few cobwebs beginning to gather at the conceptual edges of the Disney animations.
    • Boston Globe
  41. Kiss of the Dragon
    What goes on when Li isn't fighting the bad guys isn't worth discussing; it's that stupid.
    • Boston Globe
  42. The World Is Not Enough
    This 19th Bond installment is passable, but only just.
  43. U-571
    Never lets down, even if depth of character always takes second place to depth charges.
  44. Get Bruce
    Captures just enough behind-the-scenes flavor to qualify as a light, bright divertissement.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    City by the Sea
    The movie will be remembered primarily for the huge, emerging talent of James Franco, who plays De Niro's troubled son.
  46. Collateral Damage
    Schwarzenegger's mortality for the first time suits him.
  47. Domestic Disturbance
    Doesn't make nearly the ripple it could have made.
    • Boston Globe
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    The downtimes are so flat that it makes you wonder whether director John Stainton and writer Holly Goldberg Sloan made them intentionally bad, just so we'd look forward to seeing Irwin again.
  49. Two Weeks Notice
    Lawrence just leans on Grant and Bullock, who could have done a movie this breezy from the set of their next one -- where, presumably, Bullock will be playing Medea.
  50. Legally Blonde
    There's always Witherspoon, swimming upstream and never letting it slow her down. Blindingly purposeful, she's a perky blond tornado. Marilyn Monroe would not only have cheered her on. She'd have learned something.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Cuba feliz
    Grittily beautiful film that looks, sounds, and feels more like an extended, open-ended poem than a traditionally structured story.
  52. The Children of the Century
    No one around this beauty-first rendition of these addled artisans and their brief, obsessive affair really understands the attraction, so most people just get out of the way.
  53. The Shipping News
    The Shipping News is good news, but not as good as it could have been.
    • Boston Globe
  54. Sordid Lives
    It's heady in the beginning, chaotic throughout, and numb with the suddenness of the Internet economy's plummet at the end.
    • Boston Globe
  55. Haiku Tunnel
    They're a far cry from the Coen brothers, or even the Polish brothers, but Josh and Jacob Kornbluth emerge intact from their first filmmaking venture and score more hits than misses in this comedy.
    • Boston Globe
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    An Amazing Couple
    Turns what sounds suspiciously like a gimmick into a concept that holds water. Or, in this case, the sparkling wine of comedy.
  57. The Heart of Me
    The first half of The Heart of Me is just that sort of hoot. You know where it's all headed, and you can't wait for it to get there, as the cheap, cruel ironies pile up almost farcically.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    Pure bangers-and-mash realism: a spotty yet ingratiating working-class farce that suggests a Mike Leigh movie with opera buffa tendencies.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Carnage
    It's a treat, nevertheless, to watch the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni in a rare leading role. Chiara Mastroianni has her mother's hair and face with her father's sorrowful eyes stuck smack in the middle, and she moves as if conscious of the weight of her genetic splendor.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    Lightweight yet alluring.
  61. I Am Sam
    Ham-handedly manipulative film.
  62. Mission: Impossible II
    Hard-driving and propulsive as it is, the film is unable to hide the fact that Woo seems not only to be repeating himself, but parodying his earlier films on a much bigger scale, more crudely and coarsely.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Dark Blue
    In the end, the problem with movies like Dark Blue is that they willfully ignore the systemic, historical, cultural, and class causes of racism in favor of pinning it all on a few bad apples. Sure, that's entertainment. It's also a lie.
  64. Friday Night
    Has a sultry and complex psychological intent all its own, yet it's reminiscent of some earlier Denis works, including ''Nenette and Boni.''
  65. Sugar & Spice
    Isn't as dark as ''Heathers'' or as witty as ''Clueless,'' but it's at least pointed in that direction.
    • Boston Globe
  66. Teddy Bears' Picnic
    Feels conceived and shot on the fly -- like between lunch breaks for Shearer's radio show and his ''Simpson'' voice-overs.
  67. The Experiment
    This cacophonous ending may serve to reinforce the filmmakers' cynical themes, but it leaves viewers trying desperately to remember the part of the film that had brains, wit, and so much promise.
  68. Crazy in Alabama
    The pieces don't always fit together smoothly, but there's a lot of flavorful work to savor.
  69. Two Family House
    Worth staying with for the respect it pays to its characters' emotions.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Human Nature
    It's just weirdness for the sake of weirdness, and where ''Human Nature'' should be ingratiating, it's just grating.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    My Life Without Me
    It has a naive, heartfelt selfishness that may offend some viewers, and a resolve that others will find intensely soothing. ''Dying's not as easy as it looks,'' cautions Ann's doctor (Julian Richings), but here it's as easy as a movie can make it.
  72. The Gatekeeper
    Isn't the most seductive film ever made about border life or undocumented immigrants, but in a way it's unfair to compare it to such artistic triumphs as ''Touch of Evil,'' ''El Norte,'' ''Lone Star,'' and ''Traffic.''
  73. Dr. Dolittle 2
    It's warmer and fuzzier than the first film, though every bit as tedious.
    • Boston Globe
  74. The End of the Affair
    The immaculately crafted film that just sits there and refuses to come to life.
  75. The Man Who Wasn't There
    Lacks the requisite sense of dread.
    • Boston Globe
  76. Rape Me
    You won't feel raped by it, but you well may feel that it's too ideologically earnest for the porn crowd and too hard-core for serious audiences.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    About a Boy
    Renders what should have been a wholly entertaining film into a timid, soggy near miss.
  78. Joe Somebody
    The cop-out is mitigated by Allen's ability to impart a comfortable, lived-in quality to his roles, this one included.
    • Boston Globe
  79. Center Stage
    Anybody who's ever laced on toe shoes, or wanted to, will find something to take away from Center Stage.
    • Boston Globe
  80. The Flower of Evil
    If 'The Flower of Evil' is not vintage Claude Chabrol, it's at least vintage mediocre Claude Chabrol.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Emperor's Club
    That uncertainty -- in the professor, in the audience -- is what drives Emperor's Club to a surprisingly thought-provoking, even disturbing conclusion.
  82. Calendar Girls
    More like that crowd-pleasing UK fluff that requires great actresses to do wacky things. Mirren is such an easy, breezy presence that you might think she's playing the screenwriting equivalent of air.
  83. Woman on Top
    A romantic fairy tale that's light and in several ways seductive, if not exactly filling.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Missing
    The movie runs into its deepest trouble with its depiction of Lilly's captors. After years of Hollywood wooden Indians and a more recent run of tribal angels (as in "Dances With Wolves"), movies like "The Last of the Mohicans" have acknowledged the historical truth that Native Americans could be as bloody-minded as their white conquerors.
  85. Saving Grace
    It's funny and charming most of the time, thanks to Brenda Blethyn.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Beefcake
    It leaves you with an odd, sweet-and-sour taste - nostalgia painted in pastel colors, streaked with black smears.
  87. Crazy/Beautiful
    To have been the film it could have been, crazy/beautiful needed to be messier.
  88. 15 Minutes
    In a season mostly given over to unwatchable movies being cleared off studio shelves, it's at least about something. And there's no denying the lurid urgency with which it jumps off the screen.
    • Boston Globe
  89. Together
    The film doesn't amount to an emotionally palpable experience. Most of the stops it attempts to pull out are rusty. The movie ends with a gigantic lump in its throat, one that would take a tall glass of Barbara Stanwyck to wash down.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    Brad Pitt and Michelle Pfeiffer? Great to look at. Astonishingly dull to listen to.
  91. Bully
    Nothing new to say, and, in the end, no real point to make.
    • Boston Globe
  92. Sliding Doors
    You're hooked enough to keep watching, even if the characterizations veer toward the two-dimensional.
  93. Frida
    Disappointing.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Enigma
    Snoozy, plodding film that never captures the inherent suspense of its subject.
  95. Stigmata
    Could have been a classy thriller. But all the Aramaic in the world can't save it from its own pounding slickness.
  96. Basic Instinct
    Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct is a slick, trashy, blatantly manipulative thriller that you won't stop watching once you start. [20 Mar 1992, p.25]
    • Boston Globe
  97. Step Into Liquid
    Serves up enough action and passion to stay afloat, but at the end of the day it's just not the perfect ride those earlier films were.
  98. Below
    With more character development this might have been an eerie thriller; with better payoffs, it could have been a thinking man's monster movie.
  99. Committed
    Runs dry amid the cactus and sagebrush, but Graham's cartoony take on angelic unstoppableness makes us not mind so much.
    • Boston Globe
  100. K-PAX
    It would be gratifying to report that there's a lot more to K-Pax than Spacey at the top of his form, but there isn't.
    • Boston Globe
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »